The Eternity Search
by TheSumOfAllCasey
Summary: Immortal Smosh 2! After months of constantly fighting with each other and struggling to survive, Matt Sohinki and David Moss decide to work together to look for Mari. The journey soon turns into much more than a search for a missing friend, though, and becomes a quest to find inner peace and the pieces of themselves that have been missing since the apocalypse. Rated T for language
1. Chapter 1

Author's Note: Hey guys! I got a recommendation from a reader to write a sequel to Immortal Smosh about Sohinki and Lasercorn, so that's what I'm going to do! Fear not, fans of Ian and Anthony, the Smosh boys won't be totally absent from this story, but they're not going to be as important as David and Sohinki.

This story will probably be both darker and shorter than Immortal Smosh (about half the length, actually). David and Matt have been through a bit more hell than Ian and Anthony did in the first one, so their character arcs throughout the story will be... interesting.

I'm really excited to start this fic. Hopefully I can update it often- unlike with Immortal Smosh, I don't have a buffer of pre-written chapters, so you may have to wait a little while.

* * *

It was both absurd and pathetic to admit, but a bag of nacho cheese flavored Doritos were the best thing that had happened to Matt Sohinki and David Moss in the last month.

They'd found the bag of chips in the kitchen of an abandoned house, shoved to the back of a cabinet where previous raiders hadn't noticed it. It was the only food in the house, and normally Sohinki would have been disappointed. But he'd be damned if those stupid chips didn't seem to cheer David up as soon as he saw them. He and Sohinki ate the entire bag in less than five minutes, relishing in the salty, artificial flavor that reminded them both so much of life before the apocalypse.

"All I need now is a bottle of Mountain Dew and an Xbox and I'd feel almost like Lasercorn again," David commented as he licked the orange powder off his fingers.

Matt's eyebrows rose. That was the closest David had come to talking about Before in a long time. The Doritos must have put him in a really good mood. "Yeah," he agreed. "That'd be awesome."

"We should go, though," David said, glancing out a nearby window. "We've still got to find some food before tonight."

Sohinki nodded and set the empty red bag on the counter before following David out of the house.

As they walked over to the house across the street, Sohinki realized that he had the perfect opportunity in front of him. With David's mood improved by the chips and thoughts of better times, it was likely that he'd be willing to listen to Sohinki's insane idea. He might not agree with it, but if Sohinki could even get him to listen, he'd have won half the battle.

"Hey David?" he asked as they stepped up to the house's front door. It was locked, unsurprisingly, so the two men headed around the side of the house, looking for a ground-floor window that they could easily reach.

"What?" The older man stopped a few feet from a window well set in the ground.

Sohinki got straight to the point, lacking the patience to try beating around the bush. "I think we should go look for Mari."

David threw him an exasperated glance before jumping down in the window well, landing heavily on the rocks at the bottom. "Matt, I know how you felt about her, and I know you've always felt shitty about the way she left," David said as Sohinki joined him in the well. "But let's be honest—Mari's dead."

Sohinki flinched at his words, but forced himself not to show it as he swung his backpack off his shoulders and pulled a hammer out of one of the outer pockets. "We don't know that," he argued as he stepped close to the window and took a swing at it. The first hit had no effect, so Sohinki swung the hammer harder. It clanged against the glass and formed a spiderweb at the point of impact.

"Yeah, we do," David said, his voice flat. "There's no fucking way Mari could have made it all the way up to San Francisco without getting killed."

Another solid hit shattered the windowpane and Matt jumped down to the basement floor, feeling glass shards crunch under his shoes. "She had a car," Sohinki reminded David. "And guns and supplies. She could have made it."

David shook his head as he followed Sohinki into the basement. "The car would have only lasted about a day before running out of gas—after that she would've had hundreds of miles to travel by herself with hardly any protection. There's no way she could have done that."

Matt shook his head adamantly even though David wasn't looking at him. "Anthony made it from Sacramento to L.A., and he traveled the whole way on foot. What makes you think Mari couldn't have managed it too?"

David scoffed harshly. "Mari didn't have a fucking vampire bodyguard like Anthony did."

Sohinki winced. He should've known better than to bring up Anthony; it was impossible to talk about him without reminding David of Ian. "Okay, sure," he admitted as he joined David in searching the basement. "But Mari had enough weapons and ammo that she could've taken care of herself. She knows how to fight rabids as well as we do."

"Stop being naïve, Sohinki," David said unkindly as he opened a door that led to a laundry room. The only thing in it was a bag of cat litter, but David and Matt still walked in and gave the room a careful search. "Mari's either dead or got turned into a rabid or a bloodsucker, in which case she's as good as dead. Trying to convince yourself otherwise is just idiotic desperation."

"You're only saying that because you don't want to risk looking for her," Sohinki snapped as they moved back into the main room of the basement. "You're too much of a coward to risk your life looking, so you keep telling yourself she's dead so you won't feel guilty."

And just like that, they were fighting again.

"Yeah, maybe I am a coward," David spat as he squared off against Sohinki. "But I don't want to risk my life looking for someone who's probably dead and was stupid and selfish enough to leave us in the first place!"

"What if she needs help, David?" Sohinki challenged, glowering at the older man. "What if she's hurt or in trouble but nobody comes to help her? What if the only people who could do anything are too scared to show up until the sun scares away the danger and all they find is a body?"

The words had the effect Sohinki knew they would: David's jaw tightened and his brown eyes filled with repressed memories and feelings. Matt knew it was pretty damn low to make David recall what had happened to his wife, but Matt had to make his friend see sense.

"Even if she is alive and does need our help, how are we supposed to find her? Do I need to remind you that four hundred miles of rabid country separate L.A. from San Francisco?" David's voice was still angry—low and almost a growl—but at least he wasn't shouting. Sohinki knew that the right words might be enough to persuade David now. He just didn't know if his next proposition would cut it.

"Maybe we could get some help," Sohinki said, turning back to the shelf he was supposed to be searching.

"From?"

"The only person we know who has experience traveling four hundred miles through rabid territory," Sohinki said in what he hoped was an even enough voice.

"You're talking about Anthony, aren't you?" David didn't wait for a response. "No, Matt. I'm not going to ask that vampire pet for anything, much less help."

Sohinki forced himself not to lose his temper. "Just because Anthony chose to hang around a vampire doesn't make him as bad as the pets. I know you might not like it, but talking to Anthony could mean the difference in whether we make it to San Francisco or not."

David scowled. "All this effort for a girl who might be dead? Are you really so sure about this, Sohinki?"

"David," Matt said, softening his tone and looking imploringly at the older man. "It's Mari. Don't try to tell me you don't care about her anymore—she's the only friend we have left."

David deflated. "Fine. I'll help you look for Mari, and I'll even go with you if you insist on finding Anthony. But don't blame me if I end up punching him, and don't expect me to stick around if the vampire's there."


	2. Chapter 2

A/N: Hey guys! I know this teeny little chapter probably isn't worth the three-week wait for it, so I apologize in advance. I've been plagued with a bit of writer's block but, more than that, a ton of school stuff. My finals are next week, so I've been super busy. Anyway, I got this chapter together for you and I hope you like it! Thanks for continuing to follow/favorite my stuff even though I haven't been active on here lately! Hopefully I'll be able to update more often once school slows down.

* * *

The apocalypse had hit David Moss hard, right where it hurt the most. Then it rubbed salt in his wounds and laughed in his face as he rolled on the ground, trying to deal with the pain of his loss. That pain never went away no matter how long he toughed it out, so eventually David warped under it. He hadn't broken—his desire to live was still intact—but there was no doubt that the person he'd been Before was all but gone. The pain and hatred and sorrow that had been bottled in his gut for the last four months corroded him until he was almost unrecognizable. The days of running a gaming channel on YouTube under a ridiculous nickname with seven of his friends were long gone and the only bit of 'Lasercorn' still left in David was etched permanently in ink on his back.

"Sohinki, why don't you just forget about trying to find Anthony?" David asked bluntly as they wove their way through the darkened streets.

Unsurprisingly, Sohinki ignored him. David had asked that question or some variation of it a dozen times during the past six days and he'd tried almost everything he could think of to dissuade his stubborn companion from trying to seek out a man whom David still regarded as a traitor. But thus far he'd failed miserably; Sohinki was so determined to find Anthony that he'd ignored David's warnings and moved their searching to after-dark hours, claiming that Anthony might still be on a nocturnal schedule if he was trying to coexist with a vampire.

David decided to try a new, harsher approach to convincing Sohinki. "You realize that your stupid obsession with finding Anthony might cost Mari's life, right? The more time we waste, the more likely it is that she's gotten killed."

A slight weight settled on Matt's brows but he didn't look nearly as bothered as David had been hoping. "I know that," he said impatiently, "but we also can't help her if we never fucking _get _to San Francisco."

David scoffed and rolled his eyes. To his immense frustration, there was no reasoning with Sohinki at this point—his mind was too set on his goal. David was about to put voice to his anger when Sohinki interrupted him.

"Isn't that building over there where Anthony's old apartment was?"

David frowned toward the building Sohinki was pointing out, which was silhouetted against the moonlit sky.

"How the fuck should I know?" he said blandly.

"I remember seeing it once before after we all got drunk at a party and Joshua had to drive us home," Sohinki muttered.

David frowned. He had no recollection of such a night, not even among the countless pre-apocalypse memories he'd done his best to repress. But then again, if Sohinki was right, David might've been too wasted to remember the event anyway.

"I think we should head over there and check it out," Sohinki said.

"A building like that is probably full of rabids," David argued.

"Yeah, maybe. Or maybe that's where Anthony found Kalel. It's worth a shot to check it out."

David sighed. Half of him wanted to continue arguing with Sohinki—which had been such a common occurrence during the last two months that David did it almost by instinct now—but the other half wasn't opposed to the idea of trying to infiltrate a building full of rabids. He'd enjoy the opportunity to blow a few dozen rabids' rotted brains out with his pistol.

In the end, he decided not to protest and followed the other man down the dark streets. They'd only been walking for a minute before Sohinki suddenly stopped, looking at a large shape lying at his feet. David stepped up to join him and looked down at what he could now see was a decapitated rabid corpse. The head lay face down a few inches from the rest of it, surrounded in almost-black blood.

David crouched down and dipped a finger into the blood, finding only a thin congealed layer on the surface. "Fresh," he told Sohinki as he stood and wiped his finger on his pants.

"It looks like a vampire's kill. A human couldn't kill a rabid like that—they'd have to be at range or they'd risk getting bitten."

"I know," David said shortly. "And that means the bloodsucker could still be nearby, which means we should get the fuck out of here. Unless you want to end the night with holes in your neck?"

Matt threw him an irritated glance. "No. We're going to check out that apartment complex. The vampire has probably moved on by now anyway."

This time, David couldn't stop himself from rounding on the younger man and unleashing his anger. "What the hell is wrong with you, Sohinki? Are you even listening to yourself and how goddamn stupid you're being? You can't seriously think checking a building that's probably fucking empty is worth risking getting bitten by a vampire. You've never been this stupid and reckless before, so what gives? Is it all just because you want to get in Mari's pants?"

David saw a flash of white-hot sparks in Matt's brown eyes and he felt a surge of triumph at having finally provoked the other man's anger. Matt stared at David with an ugly look on his face for a long moment before he exhaled loudly and turned away. "I don't have time for your shit right now, David," he spat. "I'm going to search that building. If you're scared of vampires, then by all means go find a hole to hide in till morning."

David glowered and cussed colorfully as he followed Sohinki down the street. He kept his pistol clutched tightly in his hand, fully loaded and ready to fire at a moment's notice. It wouldn't do much good against a hungry vampire, of course, but it was the only weapon David had.

They passed a second rabid corpse—also cleanly decapitated—on the sidewalk half a block from the apartment building.

"Sohinki…," David growled warningly, stopping by the corpse.

"If Anthony really is around here, all these corpses might just be from Ian," Sohinki told him without turning back or pausing, but even he didn't sound very convinced by the suggestion.

"Is that supposed to comfort me?" David snapped. "A bloodsucker's a bloodsucker."

Sohinki stopped walking and rounded on David with an expression of disgust. "Will you just shut the fuck _up_ already, Moss?"

David scowled but didn't continue to press the issue. He'd fought with Sohinki often enough to be able to sense that the younger man's temper was worn down to a thread: if David pushed much harder, Sohinki would snap and the furious screaming that would follow would undoubtedly alert any nearby rabids and vampires to the men's presence.

Sohinki and David were still locked in angry eye contact when David saw a flash of shadowy movement on the street behind Matt. He immediately lifted his pistol into firing position at arm's length, training its barrel toward the figure. Out of the corner of his eye, David saw Sohinki's eyes widen and his hands go for his rifle as he realized that David must have seen something. Sohinki whirled around but only a second later David saw all the tension leave his shoulders as he dropped his rifle again.

"Anthony!" Matt called in a voice loud enough to make David flinch.

The figure froze and turned toward them. Even in the darkness, David recognized the tall, lanky, dark-haired figure of their former friend.

"Anthony, we need to talk to you," Sohinki said as he took several steps closer to the other man.

David hesitantly lowered his pistol back to his side—without clicking the safety back on—and followed Sohinki down the street.

Anthony took a few steps forward to close the distance between them, stopping in a patch of shadows that partially obscured his face. "Is it urgent?" he asked. "Because I kind of need to be somewhere…." There was a hint of nervousness in his voice.

"Yeah, it's urgent," Matt said. "We need your help. Remember how I told you that Mari left to go to San Francisco? Well, David and I have decided to try to track her down, but we'll need your help to get there."

"What do you mean, 'help to get there?'" Though the shadows cloaked Anthony's face, his voice gave away his uncertain frown.

"I want you and Ian to help us look for Mari," Sohinki said.

"The fuck?" David exclaimed, rounding on his companion. "That wasn't—"

"I know, David," Sohinki said without looking at him. "We can talk about this later."

David growled but forced himself to turn away and store his anger for later. At this rate it seemed like David would have to hold himself back from strangling his companion when he finally got the chance to talk to him alone.

Sohinki kept talking, seemingly oblivious—or at least indifferent—to David's fury. "Anthony, what do you say? We'll never make it to San Francisco if we don't have help from you."

Anthony was quiet for a long moment and David saw his hand reach up to stab through his hair. "I don't know…. I mean, I'd like to help you guys, but I'm not sure it's really possible and I'm not sure I could get Ian to agree."

"Not even for Mari?" Matt tried.

Anthony exhaled shortly. "I don't know…. look, Sohinki, can I have a minute to talk to you alone?"

Sohinki glanced over at David, who stiffly nodded. He knew Anthony probably wanted to talk to Sohinki about David, which wasn't surprising in the least. After all, the last time Anthony had seen David, the latter had just stabbed Anthony's best friend in the back.

"Keep it quick," was David's only comment. "I don't want to get eaten by rabids while you two are chatting."


	3. Chapter 3

"I want to help you guys find Mari, I really do," Anthony said as he turned to face Sohinki. They'd stopped a few blocks down the street from where they'd left David and Anthony was no longer standing in the shadows, letting Sohinki finally have a chance to see his face. "But things've changed since we last met up, Matt. I'm a vampire now."

Sohinki blinked. "Seriously? First Ian and now you?" He squinted at the man in front of him and realized he could see the vampire in him—his skin was paler than its normal shade of tan and there was a quiet, lethal grace in his posture.

"Yeah. I got bitten by… a rabid and Ian had to turn me." Anthony looked uncomfortable and Sohinki got the feeling he'd just received an absurdly abbreviated version of whatever must have happened.

Sohinki cursed vividly, sliding his hand through the front of his hair. "Well, whatever," he muttered, half to himself. "It doesn't matter either way." He looked back up at Anthony. "I still want your help."

"But David—"

"Can get the fuck over it," Sohinki snapped. "Just because his wife was killed by a bloodsucker doesn't mean he has to take revenge on every vampire he comes across."

Anthony frowned. "Will you actually be able to convince him of that?"

"Yeah," Matt said, though he really had no idea if it was true. _If not, I'll just go without him, _he thought harshly.

"Well, even if you can get David to agree to work with us, I'm not sure I'll ever be able to convince Ian to spend time around David again. And I'm… not so sure I'd be willing to trust him either."

Matt groaned in exasperation, trying not to drown in hopelessness and frustration and anger for David, who always seemed to complicate everything. "Then Mari's as good as dead," he snapped. He saw Anthony open his mouth, an expression of sympathy in his eyes, but Sohinki had already turned away to start pacing restlessly. "I should've gone after her the minute she left," he muttered. "It was so stupid to let her go…."

"Look, Matt, don't give up yet. I haven't even talked to Ian, so I don't know what he'll say. It's not like he hates David or anything—he'll probably agree to help."

Sohinki turned back to Anthony, exhaling a long breath through his nose. "You'll talk to him, right?"

"'Course. But you'll have to talk to David and make sure he's not going to be as… unbalanced as last time. I don't want to agree to spend two weeks around him if he still wants to kill me and Ian. Okay?"

Sohinki nodded. "Thanks, Anthony. I really appreciate it. I mean, I know I probably won't even be able to find Mari, and she might be dead by the time we get there, but I couldn't live with myself if I didn't try."

"I get it, believe me," Anthony said. There was a thread of sadness in his eyes that made Sohinki suddenly remember that Anthony probably could understand the desperate need to go check on a loved one. In fact, only two months ago, Anthony had been in the exact same situation as Sohinki—only able to look for the girl he loved after enough time had passed to make chances of finding her abysmally low.

"Did you… did you ever find Kalel?" Sohinki asked hesitantly, afraid he already knew the answer.

"Yeah, but we were too late." Anthony's face was sad and weary as he glanced down at the pavement. "She was the rabid that bit me."

"Shit," Sohinki said. "I'm sorry." That sadness in Anthony's eyes made Matt feel more desperate than ever to start looking for Mari as soon as possible. No matter how hard it would be to convince David to agree to make this trip in the company of two vampires, Sohinki _had _to succeed and he had to do it before it was too late.

He took a deep breath and said, "Why don't we plan on meeting back here tomorrow night, maybe an hour after sunset or so. I can talk to David and you can talk to Ian and we'll see if we can come to some sort of agreement."

Anthony nodded. "Sounds like a plan. And Matt, don't worry about it. I can't vouch for Ian, but I promise I'll do whatever I can to help you find Mari. If that means leaving David and Ian here while you and I go looking for her, so be it."

Sohinki didn't know what to say or how to express his gratitude. He could see in the other man's eyes that he truly meant his offer and his genuine kindness caught Sohinki by surprise. Somehow, despite all the shit that had happened since the apocalypse, Anthony was the same good-hearted person he'd always been. He'd lost Kalel and been turned into a vampire, yet he hadn't allowed those losses to make him selfish or hateful. _He's a far better man than David, _Sohinki thought. _And he's a far better man than me._


End file.
